


i'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up

by asexualizing (Specialcookies)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death, Character Study, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-22
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2019-02-18 15:36:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13103247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Specialcookies/pseuds/asexualizing
Summary: If someone can keep the spark alive it is Leia, and if someone should keep Leia’s spark alive it is Amilyn.





	i'm a cartoon, you're a full moon, let's stay up

**Author's Note:**

> ah yeah i have consumed too much meterial about leia organa and amilyn holdo in the past few days so this is the result

She likes having stars at her fingertips, not people, so she devotes herself to that. She knows exactly what to do, and exactly what to look for, and looking at the stars, she knows, will always help her find the way (nobody, Leia had said, can do that better than you. You’ve got to trust me).

It’s Leia’s plan, really. Amilyn might have her head on her shoulders these days, but it’s not enough of a head to lead, not enough of a head to not jump first into the craziest plan just because it might work and deal with the consequences later. No, Leia knows her well enough to keep her on track even while she’s --

“Hope is like the sun...” Amilyn mumbles to herself, stars at her fingertips on her private holographic map.

“Talking in riddles again, General.” Her second in command was instructed to turn Amilyn’s attention to that, but she was also instructed to keep calling her Vice Admiral.

“Vice Admiral,” Amilyn corrects her.

“I’m sorry,” her second in command looks down. “It’s just…”

Amilyn gets it. “All parts of a ship must have a name.”

“Riddles, General.”

“Vice Admiral. And thank you.”

Her second in command hesitates before nodding at her once, turning away, turning back, inhaling deeply and saying: “General Organa said to tell you, if it gets too much, you are made of wood.”

Amilyn can see the girl’s struggle with the absurdity of her own words playing across her face. She manages to smile reassuringly before thanking her again and bidding her goodbye.

“Not the best of your metaphors,” she whispers to the air, to Leia. But she remembers, of course she remembers teaching Leia all about balance during their skyfaring sessions. She didn’t know, back then, that Leia was balancing the galaxy inside of her, of course, but she had known that Leia is extraordinary.

Balance, she thinks. “Balance,” she says. “I’m in balance. I’m made of wood. I’m strong, but organic.”

*

Leia insisted (needed, she didn’t say) to keep Amilyn up to date on all possible scenarios and their solutions. She had grown to be so tired and weary that Amilyn felt pain in her chest blooming like Leia’s favourite glowing flowers. It is the sort of pain that made Amilyn hope more than ever. If someone can keep the spark alive it is Leia, and if someone should keep Leia’s spark alive it is Amilyn.

Viewing her responsibilities through this lens, she felt more capable in dealing with leadership. Mirrors shift light, and people shift love.

Except the problem, and that has always been the problem, is that leadership requires more than a plan and a promise. She hates having people at her fingertips because she can only understand stars. She had always been lead by their brightness, and she is not sure that she can shine. 

“You’ve always seen the galaxy like it’s within you,” Leia told her after Amilyn spotted a route that they can take.

“That’s you,” Amilyn replied.

Leia’s eyes crinkled with both sorrow and joy, and she put a hand on Amilyn’s elbow and squeezed so gently it hurt. “My star girl,” she whispered, as if she couldn’t breathe out without saying it.

Amilyn smiled down at her, put her palm on Leia’s cheek, and said: “How come I can understand you?”

“I have always wondered the same thing.”

*

And now there isn’t someone to understand and guide her. Amilyn keeps reminding herself that Leia trusts her, and Leia’s trust does not come easily. But Amilyn had not trusted herself in a long while.

On top of that, she has a problem.

Poe Dameron is not her problem; he is her mission.

He reminds her of Han more than she cares for, reminds her of Leia more than she cares to admit, reminds her of herself more than she can take. When Leia asked her, late at night and holding her head between her hands, to keep him safe, Amilyn knew exactly why.

Her problem is that since Ben was born, his name felt funny on her lips and lit up the laugh lines around Leia’s eyes. As the years passed by the feeling turned into the kind of funny that no one wants to laugh along to and the lines grew deeper with worry and sadness and a flurry of anger that had only shown there. Poe had brought the laugh lines back, and so Amilyn knew what was bound to happen. And now, as it is happening, she knows exactly what she needs to do about it.

Which is, essentially, the very wrong thing to do. But what choice could she possibly have to keep the only person Leia had asked to safe?

*

“Talk through the imbalance,” she found herself telling Leia when the Resistance began crumbling in front of their eyes, people dying left and right.

They were sitting in Leia’s chamber. Amilyn came by to check on her, and Leia had insistent (needed, she didn’t say) that she will sit with her.

She didn’t expect Leia to lean her head on her shoulder and sigh. To say, “The imbalance is the only thing that keeps me going.”

Amilyn had to think about that for a second. When she got the logic behind the words, she kissed the top of Leia’s head as if her lips could cure the wound inside of it. Leia took hold of her hand and put it on her beating heart and closed her eyes.

“Can you feel that?” she asked.

Amilyn had never felt anything like that before.

*

Leia taught her everything she knows about taking action; against atrocities, for justice, against the pile of things that Amilyn cherishes the same way she might cherish watching slaves being dragged into their carrier ship.

And so when everything goes to hell after she took action with all of these in mind, Amilyn is numb with confusion, feeling like she is talking to a person whose stars are not aligned in the proper way they should be.

Poe stunned to unconsciousness by Leia, people of the Resistance held by the First Order, and their chances of survival, of avoiding absolute destruction running lower and lower -- she knows with absolute and clear certainty, what she must do  _ next. _ What Leia had taught her about taking action is that one should never stop. Like light, she cannot cease travel.

She never knew how to tell Leia that the balance of the galaxy does not depend on her alone, and since Luke cut himself off from her it became even harder to prove through action. When the bridge blew up and Leia was for a brief second floating like a star too far away for Amilyn to grasp, she thought she failed in that. When Leia balanced herself back into their ship, she knew she didn’t.

She trusts Leia to understand. After all, she is the only one that possibly can.

Stars at her fingertips, she holds Leia’s hand.

*

  
Stars at her fingertips, she travels like light.


End file.
